Author's Note: As usual, Invader Zim is the property of the oh-so-spiffy Jhonen Vasquez and his tribe of winged monkeys at Nickelodeon. When we last left off, Skoodge had just found the braindead Sgt. Shnooky! Oh yes, and no giant rats, hyperactive robots, baby-like aliens, or paranormal investigators were harmed in the making of this chapter. Enjoy the show!
Chapter 4: Close Encounters of the Dib Kind
Skoodge stormed through the bases lugging Shnooky along. Behind him, Fuzzball slunk low to the ground, not wanting to attract Skoodge's attention. It had never seen Skoodge this mad before, not even when it had taken a bite out of the ship's Interstellar Positioning Unit. Fuzzball's ears perked up when it heard a squeak, and it paused, chattering its teeth in response. Just ahead was GIR, sitting on the ground with some sort of rubber animal. Fuzzball approached slowly, trying to decide if the squeaky thing was something it could eat. Skoodge's expression softened a bit as he stopped to watch. "Go ahead and play with the robot, Fuzzy. I'll go deal with Zim." Then Skoodge flounced off, leaving Fuzzball alone with GIR.
GIR smiled his innocent, vapid smile at Fuzzball. "Hi dustbunny!" He held out his toy to the Rat. Fuzzball inched forward and sniffed at the toy, whiskers twitching nervously. When GIR made the rubber beast squeak, Fuzzball leapt away, chattering its teeth. "Aw! Don't be scared, dustbunny. Pig just wants to be your friend!" The little robot squeaked the toy some more, then cocked his head as though the squeakings made some sort of sense. "You want to go for a walk and show the dustbunny around, Pig? Ok!"
"Slark! Slark! Slark!" Skoodge swore as he entered Zim's lab. He sat Shnooky down on a table and whirled on the other Invader. "You knew! You slarking well knew and didn't tell me!" Zim's antennae fell back in the face of Skoodge's wrath, and he started to try and speak in his defense but Skoodge didn't give him the chance. "How in the name of the three moons of Valbog am I supposed to inform the Nhar-Gh'ok of this? Huh?" Skoodge wanted to break something, to release his anger in one big destructive flurry. Instead, though, he settled on motion, loping back and forth like a gazelle on speed. "How could this have happened?" the ex-Invader moaned.
Zim's crimson gaze followed Skoodge's pacing. "Exposure to the deadly waves of stupidity sent out by the power amplifier," he answered matter-of-factly. Skoodge froze, eyes narrowing dangerously. "I had to do something!" Zim continued quickly, not giving Skoodge a chance to talk. "They were destroying my base and threatening to blow my cover! And no one comes between Zim and his mission! No one! Besides, I've got the computer working on a reversal of the process. Something should be ready in a few hours."
"Mother of Irk, I hope so, Zim," Skoodge sighed, his anger blowing over as quickly as it had come. He couldn't deny the importance of an Invader protecting himself from discovery. Skoodge glanced at Shnooky and smiled at the way the tiny creature was sucking on his fingers. The alien really was cute in an ugly way, like those wrinkly dogs that always looked like they had too much skin for their bodies.
"Skoodge, I meant to ask earlier, but what gender is Fuzzball?" Zim's face carried a worried frown, as if the question was one of great importance.
"Don't know," Skoodge answered with a shrug. Then, in an attempt to lighten the mood, he added, "Why? Are you having urges?"
Zim blinked, a shudder rocking his small frame at the thought. "Don't be disgusting! I just want to be prepared in case it manages to successfully breed with the monsters of this world. The last thing I need is to have your pet spurting out Rat cubs in the base!"
Indeed, that could be a problem, Skoodge realized, but at the moment he was too tired to worry about it. "Well, if you want to check, be my guest. I'm heading up to my base to get some rest. Call me when you can fix things, Zim."
Turning his attention to the massive computer screen, Zim only said, "Take Shnooky with you."
Skoodge scooped the apparent infant up, and made his way out of the labs. He felt a twinge of worry when he saw that Fuzzball and the SIR weren't still there. "They're probably playing somewhere, huh?" he murmured to his tiny charge. A line of drool trailed down Shnooky's chin. Skoodge chuckled and paused to wipe away the spittle with the corner of his tunic. "That's what I thought you'd say."
Skoodge paused in the doorway of one of his base's holding area and looked around. Bare floors, bare shelves, bare walls - nothing Shnooky could manage to accidentally hurt himself with. "Computer, bring bedding materials to this holding bay." Instantly a panel opened in one of the walls and blankets were dumped unceremoniously to the floor. Ah, the joys of artificial intelligence brains! Skoodge made a nest out of the blankets and set Shnooky in the middle of the sea of cloth. Almost instantly, the Nhar-Gh'ok soldier was asleep. "Computer, monitor the holding bay," Skoodge ordered, yawning hugely. "And alert me whenever Shnooky wakes up." Then the Irken left, locking Shnooky in. Now he didn't have to worry about Fuzzball making a midnight snack out of Shnooky.
When morning arrived, Skoodge still hadn't heard anything from Zim. "I should have known that it would take longer than a few hours," Skoodge muttered to himself as he slipped on his disguise. "Fuzzball! Fuzzy! Breakfast!" No giant rodent came skittering through the halls. 'Not good! Not good!' Skoodge wanted to go looking for his pet, but he needed a better disguise! Dashing to the upper levels of his tree base, Skoodge scooted along one of the "branches" and settled down to watch the humans. He had to figure out what was normal so that he could make his disguise!
Humans made their way up and down the sidewalk, but none stood still long enough for Skoodge to be able to pick out any common characteristics. He was starting to despair until he noticed a pair across the street. One seemed oblivious to the world, her attention focused entirely on a little box thing. The other watched Zim's base with a frightening intensity. Skoodge strained his superior Irken hearing to try to make out what the watching one was saying.
"Look, Gaz! Look at that tree! It wasn't there yesterday. Zim has to be up to something... Something evil! What insidious plan do you have in mind, Zim?"
The other human, the one called Gaz, never looked up from her box. "Zim's probably using it as a hide-out for an army of explosive ninja squirrels, Dib. Can we go home now?"
The Dib-human leapt up. "Brilliant, Gaz! You may have figured it out!" He began dashing for the base, his coat fluttering along as he ran. Skoodge's lips parted into a grin as he realized he was going to have the chance to examine a human! The only downside would be the base's security being temporarily compromised, but Zim wouldn't have to know.
As Skoodge sprang into action, plugging into his base via his backpod's multi-purpose leg extensions, he heard the box-watching human say, "Sarcasm is lost on you, Dib."
The Dib crept up to the fence, peering through the opening. No reactions from the gnomes. He was still on the sidewalk, and not considered a threat. "Come on. Just a little closer..." Skoodge muttered as he clung to his branch platform. In the back of his mind, he cursed Zim for assigning him a squirrel costume. Skoodge just didn't have the right physique to spend his time climbing so many feet in the air.
The bold little human bounded over the fence, dropping into a roll as he landed. He must have realized that by keeping low, the sensors wouldn't treat him as a threat. Making use of his connection to the base, Skoodge sent a pair of utility tentacles down through the foliage to snap up the human. As he was reeling in his catch, the Dib dropped out of his coat, only to be caught around the leg by a tentacle and dragged up. At last he was face to face with Skoodge!
Skoodge expected the human to squeal in fright at the sight of one of the elite Invaders, one of the thirty best that the Irken army had to offer. However, the Dib burst into peals of laughter. "Oh man!" he howled. "Man, I thought Zim's disguise was cruddy! All I need is one picture! One picture and you'll be exposed on Mysterious Mysteries!" Skoodge hissed at the human, tempted to hurl him back to the ground. Instead, though, he began his examination.
"External occular enhancements?" Skoodge murmured, snatching off Dib's glasses and trying them on. They blurred his vision terribly and made him dizzy. Horrid things, Skoodge decided, but he could use plain glass and no one would ever know. "Standard issue?"
"I'm not telling you anything, alien! Now give those back!" The human squirmed in the tentacles, desperate to escape. Skoodge shrugged and slid the glasses back onto Dib's face.
"Let's see," Skoodge continued. "I'll need hair, of course." He glanced at the squirrel tail of his current disguise. Hair wouldn't be any problem. Skoodge reached out to peel up the human's shirt, but the creature let out such a roar of outrage that he backed off. "Looks like we do this the hard way," Skoodge grinned. "Computer, take the human into my lab and prepare a probe to go inside him. I want to know how he works inside and out."
"You're not making me swallow anything!" Dib shouted, still trying to maintain a defiant front.
Skoodge's grin spread broader as the tentacles started to drag Dib off. "Oh, you won't be swallowing it," he called out after the human. The look of panic on the human's face was the bright spot of Skoodge's day. Skoodge settled back to observe more humans, and to keep watch for Fuzzball. The computer could handle Dib's examination without him.
After a few minutes, the base computer interrupted Skoodge's thoughts. "Master, the human has escaped."
Skoodge leapt up, almost falling out of the branches in surprise. "What? How?" Inconceivable! No creature should have been able to escape.
"Unknown," the computer responded. Inconceivable! Skoodge scurried inside. He had to find the human before the human found Zim!